You won’t get rid of all of them this year. The beetles already in your walls and attic will keep wandering out on warm days until spring, and insecticide used indoors tends to be ineffective against them. Vacuum the ones you can see, and expect more.

They won’t breed in your house or eat it, and unless someone at home is allergic, they’re mostly a nuisance. The fix that lasts is sealing the cracks they use in late spring or summer, before they come back next fall.

They’re also linked to declines in a few native lady beetles. Killing the ones in your house is an acceptable call, and we found no study showing whether it helps native ladybugs, so it may not make much difference, unfortunately.

How to Get Rid of Asian Lady Beetles Without Spraying

Vacuuming is the most efficient way to clear the ones you can reach, and a stocking keeps them out of your machine. Push a knee-high nylon stocking into the end of the extension hose, toe first, and hold it there with a rubber band. The beetles collect in the stocking. When you’re done, pull it off, close it with the band, and throw it away, beetles and all.

If your vacuum uses bags, change the bag after each session and tape and discard it or freeze it, because vacuumed beetles aren’t automatically killed and can crawl back out. The vacuum’s exhaust also blows their defensive odor around the room, so anyone allergic to lady beetles may not be able to do this job.

For a handful on a window, brush them gently into a cup. A broom is more likely to make them release the yellow fluid they use to defend themselves, and that fluid stains light surfaces. Don’t crush them on fabric or paint, since a squashed beetle can stain both.

How to kill the beetles you catch. Our practice is a quick physical kill, for beetles you’ve brushed into a cup or caught on a window. Tip one onto a hard surface, press it once and firmly with a folded paper towel, and put the towel in the outside trash. Do it away from fabric and painted surfaces. Freezing and soapy water are slower, according to a review of invertebrate euthanasia. A full vacuum bag or stocking is a bulk job, so tape the bag shut or tie off the stocking and put it in the outside trash.

Skip indoor light traps, which often give unsatisfactory results. Skip electric zappers too, which mostly kill other insects.

What If the Beetles Are Already in Your Walls?

Tens of thousands can pack into attics, ceilings, and wall voids. Heat leaking through the wall wakes them on a mild day, and they crawl toward the light, which is how a room you vacuumed on Monday has a fresh crowd on Thursday.

Spraying the cracks doesn’t help. It won’t stop the next beetles from coming out, and the dead ones can feed carpet beetles, which then go after wool and stored dry goods. Foggers don’t work either. They kill what’s on the ceiling and nothing that emerges after you air the room out. Attic foggers don’t reach beetles under insulation or inside walls either, and overusing them creates health and fire hazards.

The useful move is closing the exit. Beetles typically come out from behind baseboards, around window and door trim, and around exhaust fans and ceiling lights, and they can see light leaking through those cracks. Caulk them, starting in the room with the most beetles, and use tape as a stopgap. Sealing the inside doesn’t remove anyone from the wall, so expect to vacuum on and off through spring.

Expect a second wave in late winter. As the days warm, the beetles wake first on the sunnier, southwest side of the house and try to get outside, and some wander inward and come out behind baseboards, walls, and suspended ceilings. Many never find the way out and stay trapped inside. That’s why the pile on the sill keeps growing, and it’s why vacuuming works better than waiting.

Check inside your window air conditioners in fall and again in early spring. The openings are rarely screened, and beetles clog them.

Why Asian Lady Beetles Pick Your House

For an Asian lady beetle, your house is a good stand-in for a cliff.

In Japan, the beetles fly to south-facing rock cliffs and outcroppings in fall, and a sunny house wall seems to work the same way on them. In Pennsylvania they gather on the south and southwest sides on warm afternoons that follow cold nights, starting around early October. Buildings with dark and light contrast attract them, and buildings near woods get more than buildings in open country.

Once one beetle finds a good crevice, others follow. A pheromone, a chemical signal that draws the same species, may be behind it, along with droppings from the previous winter or the smell of beetles that died there.

They aren’t looking for food or a place to breed, so they don’t do either indoors. Every beetle you see inside in winter or spring came in the previous fall, and an individual can live up to three years.

How to Keep Asian Lady Beetles Out Next Fall

Sealing is the fix that lasts, and it isn’t perfect. It cuts the numbers rather than ending them, and the beetles fit through gaps of about 1/8 inch. Do the work in late spring or summer, before they start flying to buildings. Finish by mid-September. Beetles start showing up in late September in Minnesota, so earlier is safer.

Walk the south and west walls first. Check these spots.

• Window and door trim, and every seam where two materials meet, like brick and wood siding
• Fascia boards and soffits
• Pipes, cable lines, and outdoor faucets where they enter the house
• The bottoms of doors, which need sweeps or thresholds, plus a rubber seal on garage doors and foam weatherstripping under sliding doors
• Window and door screens, and the screens in roof vents, soffit vents, and bathroom and kitchen fans
• Window air conditioners, where the openings are rarely screened
• Firewood stacked against the house, which can carry them in

Silicone or silicone-latex caulk handles cracks. Copper mesh or expanding foam fills larger holes, and copper beats steel wool, which can rust and stain siding. Screen attic and exhaust openings with number 20 screen mesh, and never block a vent that has to move air.

Asian lady beetle calendar

Late spring and summer

Seal gaps, repair screens, and fit door sweeps, before the beetles start flying to buildings.

By mid-September

Finish sealing before mid-September.

Fall

Beetles gather on sunny south and west walls on warm afternoons. Pennsylvania sees this from early October, and Minnesota between late September and late October. Vacuum any that get in, and check window air conditioners.

Winter

Mild, sunny days wake beetles in the walls, and they head for windows. Vacuum them, and caulk the interior cracks they come out of.

Late winter and spring

Beetles wake first on the sunny southwest side and try to leave, and many stay trapped inside. Keep vacuuming, and check window air conditioners again.

Timing varies by region. Dates here come from extension pages in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Kentucky.

Do Peppermint Oil, Vinegar, or Citrus Keep Them Away?

There are no repellents that make the beetles leave. Peppermint oil, citrus peels, vinegar, and bay leaves get passed around online, and none of them are listed as working by the extension pages we used.

Ladybug houses from garden catalogs won’t keep them out of your home either. Vacuum and seal instead.

How to Tell an Asian Lady Beetle From a Native Ladybug

Asian lady beetles are real ladybugs. “Ladybug” and “lady beetle” cover the whole family, Coccinellidae, so the invader counts too. The giveaway is on the plate right behind the head, the pronotum. On an Asian lady beetle it’s white with a black M or W, and the mark can be thick, thin, broken, or filled in solid on dark beetles.

Color and spot count don’t settle it. They run from yellow-orange to red to black, with anywhere from no spots to 18 or 19, and they’re a quarter to a third of an inch long, bigger than most natives. A crowd on a sunny wall in fall is classic Asian lady beetle behavior, but check the marking before you decide.

Are Asian Lady Beetles Dangerous?

Asian lady beetles can’t sting, don’t carry disease that impact humans, and they don’t eat wood, fabric, or food. They do bite. Some bites break the skin and hurt briefly, and one extension sheet compares it to a pinprick. Their yellow defensive fluid smells bad and stains light surfaces.

Allergy is the real health issue. Eye and nose irritation, asthma, and facial swelling have all been linked to lady beetle infestations in homes, and some people who react to cockroaches cross-react to lady beetles. If you suspect a reaction, see a doctor, and don’t touch your eyes after handling them. Pets that eat them can get chemical burns inside the mouth, so call a vet if your dog or cat chews one.

Is It OK to Kill Asian Lady Beetles?

Yes. Asian lady beetles are an invasive species, and their spread has been linked to declines in a few native lady beetles. They were released on purpose for decades, starting in California in 1916, and none of those releases took. The ones here seem to descend from a batch that arrived by accident, probably on cargo, and turned up established in Louisiana in 1988. We found no study that tested whether removing them from homes helps native ladybugs, so killing the ones in your house may not make much difference to the natives, unfortunately.

A 24-year Michigan dataset found that only two native species, the two-spotted and pink spotted lady beetles, declined significantly, and each one’s decline varied with how much its diet overlapped with the invader’s. An 11-year study at four sites in England, where this beetle is called the harlequin ladybird, saw native ladybirds fall from 99.8 percent of those sampled to 30.7 percent, though only the two-spotted species declined significantly. The authors hypothesize that the invader preying on other ladybirds is an important driver.

The same beetle is one of the best aphid predators around. Larvae and adults eat aphids, and in orchards they can hold aphids below damaging levels. They also infest damaged fruit, and when a few get crushed with grapes at harvest they leave a taint that makes juice and wine unsellable.

So one insect is a pest in your attic, a predator in the orchard next door, and a competitor for some native ladybugs. Killing the ones in your house is an acceptable call, and what you control most is whether they overwinter there.

When to Call a Professional

Call someone when the same house fills every year, when the openings are on a roofline you can’t safely reach, or when someone at home has a real allergy. A pest control firm, a building contractor, or a painter can do the sealing. Ask for inspection and exclusion work, not a spray appointment. Some extension services list a professionally applied exterior insecticide band in late September for stubborn cases, but sealing is the better fix, and Kentucky’s sheet calls it the more permanent one.

Asian Lady Beetle FAQ

Will they leave on their own?

Some will in spring. They try to move outdoors, but many stay trapped inside.

How long do they live?

An individual can live up to three years.

Can they survive outside in winter?

Yes, in protected spots like leaf litter and under the bark of dead trees. Whether one dropped outside on a freezing day finds a spot like that is another question.

Will sealing my windows stop them?

It helps, but it won’t stop them alone. Gaps around siding, fascia, utility lines, and vents are all entry points, so check the whole outside of the house.

The post How to Get Rid of Invasive Asian Lady Beetles (Without Spraying) appeared first on Give A Shit About Nature.

The mouse doesn’t deserve a slow death just because it wandered into your house. But it can’t stay there, either. What works is exclusion: find how they get in, close it, and get the ones already inside out.

This guide leads with exclusion. It says plainly that live capture rarely fits indoors, and that snap traps plus sealing are the realistic path for most homes. Poison and glue traps get no recommendation, and you’ll see why.

Decision tree

You hear scratching in the wall

Step 1

Confirm mouse activity

Droppings, gnaw marks, shredded nesting material, night noise

↓

Step 2

Find the routes, plan the exit

Look for gaps a pencil fits through. Do not seal yet. Decide where a caught mouse goes before you set anything.

↓

Step 3

Trap along the routes

Check daily. Hold sealing until a week with no catches.

↓

Most homes

Snap traps, then seal

Gloves, disinfectant on the mouse and trap, then bag it. Never poison or glue.

Narrow option

Live capture

Only a confirmed native mouse, legal release on your property, and hantavirus precautions.

↓

Step 4

Confirm clearance, finish sealing, clean wet

A week with no catches and no new signs. Then seal what is left. Spray droppings wet before wiping.

Avoid sealing a suspected occupied cavity without a removal or escape plan.

Short version: confirm it’s mice, find the routes, trap with snap traps in most homes (live capture only in narrow cases), and seal the gaps once the walls are clear.

First, make sure it’s actually mice

A house mouse is small, gray to light brown, with big ears and a tail that has almost no fur. A deer mouse has bigger eyes, a white belly with a clear line between the colors, and a furry tail. Both can end up in a wall. The difference matters, and the next section explains why.

Signs that fit mice. Droppings, gnaw marks, nests of shredded paper or fiber, and a musky smell in older infestations. Mice are mostly active at night, so scratching after dark fits. To check, sprinkle flour or baby powder along the wall where you suspect they run, and look for tracks in the morning.

Heavy thumping, noise in broad daylight, or much larger droppings point to something else, and that needs a different plan. If you aren’t sure what you have, ask a local wildlife professional before you set anything.

How to get mice out of your walls humanely

Humane here means the mouse leaves alive when that’s realistic, and the way back in gets closed. Work in this order.

Step 1: Find where they get in and out. Mice squeeze through a hole about the width of a pencil, roughly a quarter inch. Check around pipes and wires, vents, door sweeps, the foundation, and the garage. Mark every gap, but leave the ones that might be an exit open for now. Sealing comes once the walls are clear, and the steps are in the mouse-proofing section below.

Step 2: Decide whether live capture fits, and where the mouse would go. The deer mouse is the most common carrier of the hantavirus that causes hantavirus pulmonary syndrome in the United States. People get it by breathing in dust from fresh urine, droppings, or nesting material, or from saliva, urine, or feces getting into cuts or the eyes, nose, or mouth. HPS is severe, and 38 percent of people who develop breathing symptoms may die.

It is also rare. CDC counted 890 hantavirus cases in the United States from 1993 through 2023, and 94 percent were west of the Mississippi River. The point isn’t to panic. It’s that the way you handle a trapped mouse matters.

CDC advises against live traps, which can scare rodents into urinating and raise your chance of getting sick. Gloves don’t cover that risk, because the danger is dust in the air. A 1999 CDC journal letter on deer mice carries the title “A Reason Not to Live Trap Deer Mice in Residences”.

Release has its own problem. In the 1999 deer mouse study, researchers trapped 19 mice in a Colorado bunkhouse, tagged them, and let them go. Five came back, one from 1,200 meters (about three-quarters of a mile), all within 24 hours. That was a small study of deer mice, not house mice. UC IPM reports that house mice moved as much as a half mile can find their way home, and that released house mice are likely to be killed by predators or die of exposure.

Put those together and live capture almost never fits indoors. The native mice you could release are the hantavirus hosts, and the house mouse, which isn’t a meaningful carrier, rarely survives release. Native mice that moved in for fall or winter can be returned outside, and a mouse raised indoors has a slim chance, especially in cold weather. In California, relocating live wildlife, including house mice, off the property where you caught it takes a state permit. Check your own state’s rules, and UC IPM goes further and recommends that live-trapped mice be humanely euthanized.

For most homes, a well-placed snap trap that kills quickly is kinder than a release the mouse is unlikely to survive, and it avoids the live-trap hantavirus problem. Live capture is a narrow option, only for a mouse you’re confident is native, with a legal release spot on your own property near cover, and the precautions below.

Step 3: Trap along their routes. Set traps flat against the wall where the tracks and droppings are, and check them every day. If you do live-trap, set it where the tracks run, check it first thing in the morning, last thing at night, and at least once more during the day, and release right away. Wear gloves, don’t breathe in over the trap, and disinfect it before reuse.

Pups. A female caught in the trap may have young in a nest, and that’s true whether the trap is live or snap. Mouse pups are weaned at about 21 days and then start leaving the nest, so they walk into traps too. Keep trapping and hold off sealing until you’ve had a week with no catches. Call a humane wildlife professional if you can still hear pups but trapping has stopped producing. A nursing mother means young in a nest, and pups left alone will starve.

How to get mice out of the wall itself

Mice in a wall may never walk out onto a trap on the floor. Walls are just where they travel and nest. The goal is to give them a way to meet a trap or leave.

Think like a climber. Mice are excellent climbers that run up any rough vertical surface, jump up to 12 inches, and run along wires and cables. Traps don’t all belong at floor level. Put some on ledges, shelves, and on top of stored boxes where mice are active, away from kids and pets. Note where the scratching travels, along plumbing runs and outlets, since those mark the routes.

Use the openings you can reach. Set traps where the wall opens up: behind appliances, under sink plumbing gaps, along the baseboard where it meets a gap, and at the basement or attic end of the wall. Place them against the wall, with the bait end touching it.

Try an access hole. Victor’s method is to drill a nickel-sized hole in the drywall just a few inches above the floor, cut a matching hole in the side of a cardboard box, put a baited trap in the box, and secure the box against the wall. Mice reach it through the hole and the trap stays out of reach of kids and pets. Victor’s version uses a snap trap. A live trap in that box brings back the hantavirus cautions above. Drill away from outlets and switches, since that’s where wires run, and stop if you hit anything. Patch the hole once the wall is clear, or you’ve made a new way from the wall into the room.

One-way doors. A one-way door lets an animal leave and blocks the way back in. It’s the gentlest exit for wildlife living in a structure, but they’re sold as a humane way to remove larger animals such as raccoons, squirrels, and bats, and a door fitted while there are young inside can strand them. Mice that nest close to a food stash may also have little reason to leave. For mice, ask a wildlife professional whether a door fits your case.

If you can’t reach any route. Don’t cut open the wall and chase them. Set traps at every reachable end of the wall, keep the possible exits open, and give it a couple of weeks. If scratching continues, call a professional who does exclusion and trapping, not bait.

Wiring risk. UC IPM notes that mice gnaw on electrical wires in walls, and many fires of unknown origin are believed to be caused by rodents gnawing wires. If you smell burning, see sparking, find a hot outlet, or have a breaker that keeps tripping, stop and get an electrician. Don’t open a wall around energized wiring yourself.

Snap traps: the realistic path for most homes

When live capture doesn’t fit, which is most of the time, a snap trap is the least bad lethal option. CDC recommends them, and UC IPM calls trapping a great first step.

Place them flat on the floor against the wall, in a T shape with the wall, and in the spots mice already use: behind the stove and fridge, at the back of cabinets, and near the entry points. Use a pea-sized dab of chunky peanut butter as bait. Nesting material also works as bait. Wide-trigger traps work better. Check them daily.

Disposing of a dead mouse safely. In deer mouse areas, the dead mouse is the exposure. Wear gloves. Spray the dead rodent, the nest, and the area around it with disinfectant, let it soak for 5 minutes, then bag it with the used trap. Put the bag in a covered garbage can, and wash your hands afterward.

This is the stopping point for lethal methods. We don’t recommend poison, glue boards, or drowning.

Why you should never use mouse poison

Poison is slow. The common second-generation anticoagulants stay in tissue, a poisoned rodent keeps feeding for several days, and the body carries residues afterward. Non-target wildlife and pets can be poisoned if they eat rodents that have consumed certain poisons, and EPA’s review covers why.

It also fails inside your house. Mice stay within about 30 feet of the nest, so poisoned mice often die in the structure, in your wall. UC IPM adds that bromethalin can move through the food chain to predators. The animals that eat mice are the ones at risk.

CDC lists rodenticides as a later step for persistent infestations. We don’t, because exclusion and traps solve the same problem without poisoning anything else.

Do peppermint oil, ultrasonic repellents, or other home remedies work?

Ultrasonic devices. Ultrasonic sound has very limited use. It’s directional and doesn’t carry behind objects, mice get used to repeated sounds, and there’s little evidence that sound, magnetic, or vibration devices drive out established mice. A wall is exactly where the sound won’t reach.

Peppermint oil, vinegar, and ammonia. They’re all over the internet, but no agency or extension source we found shows any of them clears an established colony. A smell can’t close a quarter-inch hole.

Glue boards. Adult mice often avoid them, and a mouse that does get stuck can suffer for hours. They get no recommendation here.

How to tell when all the mice are gone

CDC’s indicator is a week with no rodents caught and no new signs. That guidance is written for rats, so a week is the minimum for mice. Keep checking past it.

Re-run the flour test along the old routes. No new tracks, no fresh droppings, and no night noise means the wall is clear. Keep checking past the first week.

How to mouse-proof the gaps for good

Wait until the walls are clear. UC IPM treats traps and exclusion as a pair, and sealing a wall with mice still in it just traps them. Until then, close only the gaps you’re sure aren’t their only way out, and keep an exit or a trap at any spot where mice may still be inside.

Then finish the rest. Use wire screen or coarse steel wool, since mice chew through foam, plastic, and rubber, and check around pipes and wires, vents, door sweeps, the foundation, and the garage. Patch any access holes you drilled in the drywall. Keep outside food sources gone and trim shrubs back about 18 inches from the foundation.

How to clean up safely after mice

Because of hantavirus, the cleanup method avoids stirring up dust. Wear gloves. Spray droppings and nesting material with a bleach solution or an EPA-registered disinfectant until it’s very wet. Let it sit for 5 minutes, then wipe it up with paper towels. Do not sweep or vacuum.

Put contaminated insulation in plastic bags. Wash your hands afterward. If mice got into your HVAC ducts, CDC says to call a professional.

When to call a professional

Call someone if you can’t find the entry points, the noise is heavy or constant, you suspect pups, the infestation keeps coming back, or mice have reached the ducts or wiring. Ask any company up front whether it uses rodenticide, and say you don’t want it. A good exclusion company seals holes and traps. It doesn’t just drop bait.

FAQ

Will mice leave on their own? Rarely, and they breed fast. Give traps and exclusion a couple of weeks, not months of waiting.

Can I seal the holes with mice still inside? Not until the walls are clear. Sealed mice can’t leave, and a dead mouse in a wall is a smell problem you’ll find later.

Is it humane to release a house mouse outside? Sometimes, and not for every mouse. Indoor-raised house mice have poor odds outdoors, and some states restrict relocation. A native mouse that moved in this fall has better odds, but deer mice carry the hantavirus risk described above, which is why snap traps are the realistic path for most homes.

How far away should I release a mouse? No distance is reliably far enough. Deer mice came back from 1,200 meters, and house mice have found their way back from a half mile. Release on your own property, near cover.

Does peanut butter work as bait? Yes. CDC says chunky peanut butter works best on a snap trap, in a small amount. Nesting material works too.

What if a mouse dies in the wall? Expect a smell for days to a few weeks. Orkin puts a mouse’s full decomposition at about one to two weeks, depending on temperature, ventilation, and humidity. Your options are to ventilate and wait, or find the strongest spot and open the wall there, which a professional can do. Poison is the main reason mice die where you can’t reach them.

Are mouse droppings dangerous? Yes, they can be. Deer mice carry hantavirus, and virus in fresh droppings and urine can get into the air when disturbed. That’s why the cleanup method is to wet them down and wipe them up, not sweep or vacuum.

How small a hole can a mouse get through? About a quarter inch, or the width of a pencil.

How long until I know they’re gone? A week with no catches and no new signs is the CDC marker, and it’s written for rats. Keep the flour test going to be sure.

Mice are food for owls, foxes, and snakes. Keep that food web outside your house, and keep poison out of it.

The post How to Get Rid of Mice in Your Walls (Without Poison) appeared first on Give A Shit About Nature.

In 2020, a curator at the UNC Chapel Hill Herbarium found several dead waxwings in February within sight of a nandina planting. That led to a year of monthly cyanide tests on campus and in nearby gardens. Nandina leaves and green berries release cyanide fast. Ripe red berries release it slowly, and berries that hang on for two months or more mostly lose their punch. Waxwings still get into trouble, because a flock swallows berries by the beakful and can strip a bush in minutes.

Heavenly bamboo isn’t bamboo, and it isn’t harmless. It’s a barberry-family shrub listed as invasive in North Carolina that has spread into natural areas across the Southeast. You can get rid of it. Cutting it to the ground won’t do it, because the roots keep going.

Pick your method

How to remove nandina

Method 1

Dig out the roots

Best for

Seedlings and small shrubs in loose soil

The catch

A broken root piece can regrow

Method 2

Cut and treat the stumps

Best for

Large, established clumps

The catch

Needs a systemic herbicide, applied within minutes of the cut

Method 3

Keep cutting regrowth

Best for

No herbicide, and too big to dig

The catch

Can take a year or more

Dig out small plants. Cut big ones and treat the stumps. Or keep cutting regrowth until the roots give up. Each one comes down to finishing the roots, so here’s how to do all three without leaving a living piece behind.

How to Identify Nandina

Before you dig anything, make sure it’s nandina. It’s an upright evergreen shrub with cane-like stems, and the leaves give it away. Each leaf is divided two or three times into smaller leaflets, so one leaf can run a foot or two long. That airy look is where the bamboo nickname comes from.

Growth habit. Nandina grows as an upright clump. In late spring it sends up loose plumes of small white flowers.

Leaves. Look for smooth, pointed leaflets spread along thin stalks. New growth is often reddish before it turns green.

Berries. Bright red berries hang in clusters at the stem tips in fall and stay on into winter. They are the easiest way to spot nandina from across a yard.

Canes. The stems are cane-like and grow in a clump from one base. Every cane in a clump comes off the same crown and root system, which is why trimming the tops doesn’t finish the job.

Some cultivars are dwarf, with red winter foliage and few or no berries, so a plant that doesn’t match every photo here can still be nandina.

Why You Should Consider Removing Nandina

Birds carry the berries into woods, and the plant also sends up shoots from underground stems, so one clump becomes a thicket. In forests and woodlands it forms dense thickets that outcompete native plants. Its berries are fine for a bird that eats a few. For a waxwing that eats a few dozen, they’re not.

Where you live matters. Nandina is a documented invader in the Southeast and in Missouri’s woodlands, so check your state’s invasive plant list before you assume it’s a problem near you. Sterile and low-fruiting cultivars are a different story. Florida trials of 26 selections found several that met the noninvasive designation, which makes them a better pick if you can’t part with nandina. If you’re hunting for other invaders, our guide to invasive plants that birds spread covers more.

How to Remove Nandina: 3 Methods That Work

Method 1: Dig out small plants. Digging is the most dependable fix for seedlings and small shrubs. Pull seedlings when the soil is moist, because nandina can resprout from any piece of root left behind. Bigger plants are harder for exactly that reason.

1. Water dry soil first, or work after rain, so roots slide out instead of snapping.
2. Dig a circle wider than the visible stems.
3. Lift out the root crown and as much of the attached root system as you can.
4. Follow any creeping underground stems and take the shoots they connect to.
5. Check the spot through the growing season and dig any sprout that shows up.

Method 2: Cut and treat large plants. For big, established clumps, Missouri’s conservation department recommends cutting and treating the stems instead of digging. A clump has a lot of root, and a systemic herbicide carries the dose down into it. You cut the stems for access, and the herbicide does the root work.

1. Find every stem in the clump.
2. Cut each one close to the ground with loppers or a pruning saw.
3. Within minutes of each cut, put a systemic herbicide labeled for cut stumps or woody brush on the fresh surface. Glyphosate and triclopyr are the two active ingredients extension offices point to.
4. Keep it on the cut surface. Glyphosate kills whatever else it touches, including the plants you want.
5. Come back for resprouts and treat them again.

A systemic herbicide gets absorbed and moves through the plant. A contact-only product just burns the leaves, which isn’t much better than cutting them off. That’s why a systemic product labeled for the job matters. The herbicide section below covers how to pick one.

Method 3: Remove nandina without herbicide. If you can’t dig the whole root system and don’t want to spray, you can wear the plant out.

• Cut every stem to ground level.
• Check often for new shoots.
• Remove each flush of regrowth promptly, before the leaves can feed the roots again.
• Keep going until nothing comes back.

This works because the roots run on stored energy, and every cut forces the plant to spend more of it on new shoots. It works slowly. Maryland’s extension office says well-established, vigorous plants can take a year or more.

Best Herbicide for Nandina

Extension guidance keeps landing on two active ingredients, glyphosate and triclopyr. Glyphosate is non-selective, so it hurts any plant it touches. In warm months, triclopyr foliar sprays won’t harm grasses or sedges, which helps when nandina is growing through a lawn edge.

Roundup is a brand, not an ingredient, and different Roundup products contain different things. Read the active ingredient and the label’s permitted uses. Maryland’s extension office says any formulation labeled for this use in a home landscape is fine, and that the brand matters less than the label.

I’m not giving you a dilution, on purpose. Missouri, Mississippi State, and Texas all publish different mixes for nandina because they’re written for different products, and some products come pre-diluted. Your bottle’s label is the only number that applies to you.

What’s the Best Time of Year to Kill Nandina?

For cut-stump treatment, Missouri’s guidance is late summer, early fall, or the dormant season. It says to avoid spring, when sap is rising, and expect some resprouting that needs a follow-up treatment.

Digging works any time the soil is workable. Missouri reserves foliar sprays for dense infestations, using triclopyr in warm months and glyphosate in winter, while the leaves are still green and native plants are dormant. Whatever the season, cut berry clusters off before they ripen so they can’t feed birds or seed the neighborhood.

What Doesn’t Work Against Nandina?

Cutting it down once. Without a treated cut or follow-up cutting, nandina resprouts from the roots.

Mowing. Repeated mowing can knock back shoots, but it’s the slow version of Method 3 without the discipline.

Vinegar, salt, and boiling water. They burn the leaves above ground and leave the roots alive. Salt also stays in the soil and can hurt the plants you want to keep.

Pulling out only the visible stems. The crown and underground stems stay behind and send up new shoots.

How to Dispose of Nandina After You Remove It

Disposal is about three things. Don’t spread seed, don’t let roots take hold somewhere else, and keep pets and livestock away from the pile.

• Cut off fruit clusters and bag them so the seeds can’t spread.
• Follow your local yard-waste rules for the bags.
• Don’t put berries or root pieces in a cold compost pile.
• Keep cuttings and berries away from pets and livestock. The leaves and berries are toxic to them.
• Clean your tools, and check any soil you move for root pieces.

Seeds from berries already on the ground can sprout later, so expect to retreat the spot.

What to Plant Instead of Nandina

Pick species that are native where you live. These four are native to the eastern United States, and all of them feed wildlife. If waxwings are the reason you’re here, UNC’s botanists suggest eastern red cedar as their preferred native food. Our guide to planting one native tree has more ideas.

American beautyberry. A shrub native to the central and southeastern United States, with purple berries in fall that songbirds and small mammals eat.

Winterberry holly. A deciduous holly that holds red berries into winter. It likes moist, acidic soil, and you need a male plant nearby to get berries on the females.

Inkberry holly. A broadleaf evergreen for year-round leaves instead of red berries. It suckers to form colonies, so give it room.

Spicebush. A deciduous shrub that does best in part shade and moist soil, and a larval host plant for spicebush swallowtails. Pair a male and a female for the red berries. More shade options are in our native plants for shade list.

FAQ

Will nandina grow back if you cut it down? Yes. Established nandina resprouts from its roots, so cutting alone doesn’t kill it. You have to treat the cut stems, dig out the roots, or keep removing regrowth until the plant runs out of stored energy.

How deep are nandina roots? There isn’t one depth. A plant has a root crown, lateral roots, and creeping underground stems, and bigger plants have substantial root systems. What matters is that a piece left behind can resprout, so dig wide and follow the roots.

Does Roundup kill nandina? Some glyphosate products can control it, but Roundup is a brand that covers products with different ingredients. Check that your product lists glyphosate or triclopyr and that the label allows woody brush or cut-stump use.

Can you remove nandina without chemicals? Yes. Dig out the root system, or cut every stem and keep removing regrowth. Digging is quicker on small plants. Repeated cutting can take a year or more on big ones.

Are all nandina varieties invasive? No. Sterile and low-fruiting cultivars carry less risk of spreading by seed, and Florida trials found several that met the noninvasive designation. Check which cultivar you have before you decide.

Will nandina roots damage my foundation? I couldn’t find a source that says they do. The documented problems are regrowth and spread, not structural damage. Plant any shrub a reasonable distance from your foundation anyway.

The post How to Remove Nandina (Heavenly Bamboo) for Good appeared first on Give A Shit About Nature.

A roost box is a birdhouse built for that job. You can build one, buy one, or turn a nest box you already own into one with a screwdriver and some tape.

Why birds pile into a box at night

Small birds have a lot of surface area for their size, which is why they cool off quickly. They fluff their feathers to trap air, and a lot of species huddle together too. A cavity helps with both. It blocks wind, rain, and snow, and it keeps bodies close.

On cold nights, bluebirds and chickadees can let their body temperature drop 10 to 15 degrees and slow their metabolism, which saves fuel. The state is called nocturnal hypothermia.

Some species take huddling to an extreme. In a British survey of garden nest boxes, wrens averaged about 10 to a box, and the biggest group counted was 51. Those were Eurasian wrens, but American bluebirds pile in too, and more than a dozen of them will sometimes share a single box.

How a roost box differs from a nest box

Warm air rises. In a regular nest box the entrance is near the top, so a bird sleeping on the floor sends its body heat up and out the hole. A roost box flips that. The entrance hole is near the bottom and the birds perch above it, so the warm air stays trapped over their heads.

Two other changes follow. A nest box has ventilation holes to keep eggs and chicks from overheating in summer, and a roost box has few or none, because you want to hold heat in. And it has perches, usually staggered dowels, so birds can stack up at different heights instead of crowding onto a smooth floor. Some builders roughen the inside walls so woodpeckers can cling.

Dimensions vary by plan. Georgia’s version is 10 inches square and 3 feet tall, and the plan below is 12 inches wide and 20 to 26 inches tall. Either way, the perches are thin dowels staggered so no bird sits directly under another. Nobody wants to sleep under a bird that spent the day eating berries.

The evidence for these design details is thin. Bluebird specialists disagree on whether perches are needed, and at least one doubted that bluebirds would use a low entrance at all. None of these sources compares the two designs head to head. A plain nest box with the vents sealed works, and birds do use it.

Who uses them

Bluebirds, chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, and small woodpeckers all use roost boxes. Carolina wrens, flickers, and screech owls roost in cavities too, and blue jays will duck into a box when the weather turns bad.

Not all of them share. Bluebirds often share, and the wrens in that survey did. Chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, and downy woodpeckers usually sleep alone, so a box that holds a dozen birds will mostly host one of them at a time. Downies rarely nest in boxes, but they’ll roost in an unused one just before dusk, and they sometimes enlarge the entrance hole. A hole guard fixes that.

People worry that the birds at the bottom of a pile get smothered. Photos of crowded roosts show birds fanning their heads outward, which suggests they leave themselves air, but that doesn’t settle it. Dead birds do turn up in boxes after severe cold, and Sialis judges food shortage, dehydration, or disease more likely than smothering. Nobody has measured it directly, so treat it as unsettled.

Turn a nest box into a roost box

Start in fall. Clean out the old nest and let the box air out for a few days. Then make these four changes.

• Flip the front panel so the entrance hole sits at the bottom, if your box has a removable front.
• Add perches. Twigs, diagonal sticks, or a small ladder like the one in a chicken coop all work.
• Seal the ventilation holes with duct tape or rolled caulk on the outside only. Leave the drainage holes in the floor open so water can’t pool.
• Put an inch of small wood chips or soft dry grass on the floor. Skip sawdust, cedar bedding, and big chips that can jam in the hole.

If you don’t want to cut anything, skip the flip and the perches. Seal the vents, add the bedding, and you still have a box that holds heat far better than it did in summer.

Build one: materials and measurements

If you want to build from scratch, this plan from Shaw Creek Bird Supplies covers it. It starts with one rough-cut 1 x 12 board, 12 feet long. Cedar lasts longest, and pine or fir work but wear out sooner.

Cut list and layout

Everything comes out of one 1 x 12 board, 12 feet long. Drawn to scale.

The pieces run 136 3/4 inches end to end, which fits in the 144-inch board with 7 1/4 inches left for saw cuts.

Piece	Qty	Size (in)	Notes
Back	1	12 x 36	Score grooves on the inside face between 10 in from the top and 6 in from the bottom.
Side	2	26 3/8 on the long edge, 20 on the short edge, 11 wide	The top edge slopes from 26 3/8 down to 20. Drill six 3/8-in pilot holes, 1/4 in deep, on the inside.
Top	1	12 x 11	15 degree bevel.
Front	1	12 x 20	15 degree bevel. Grooves on the inside. Entrance hole with its bottom edge 1 1/2 in up.
Bottom	1	11 long	Four drainage holes. Sits slightly recessed. Fit the width to the box.
Predator guard	1	6 x 6	Drill a matching entrance hole and glue it on the outside of the front.
Perch	12	3 long, 3/8 dowel	Six per side, staggered. Cut from one 3 1/2 ft dowel.

Cut dimensions adapted from the plan.

You’ll also need a 3 1/2-foot hardwood dowel, 3/8 inch thick, wood glue, wood screws, one brass hinge, and a small hook and eye. For tools, use a saw that tilts to 15 degrees, a drill with a 3/8-inch bit, and a hole saw or spade bit for the entrance.

• Bevel the top and front pieces at 15 degrees.
• Cut grooves 1/4 inch deep and 3/8 inch apart across the inside of the front. Score the back the same way, between 10 inches from the top and 6 inches from the bottom. Woodpeckers use them to cling.
• Drill the entrance with its bottom edge 1 1/2 inches above the bottom of the front. The hole size depends on which birds you want in or out, and the plan lists 1 1/2, 2, and 3-inch bits. Glue the predator guard over it, holes lined up, so squirrels and raccoons can’t reach in.
• Drill six 3/8-inch holes, 1/4 inch deep and not through, in the inside of each side piece. Stagger them so no perch sits directly over another. Cut the dowel into 3-inch perches and glue them in.
• Drill four drainage holes in the floor. These stay open, unlike the ventilation holes you seal in a nest box. Screw the sides to the back, set the bottom in slightly recessed, then screw on the front with the bevel at the top.
• Hinge the lid so you can clean the box, and add the hook and eye to hold it shut.

Leave the outside untreated, and never paint or oil the inside.

Where to put it

Mount it 8 to 10 feet up with the entrance facing south or east, away from the prevailing wind. The box should be waterproof and firmly attached. Use a pole with a predator guard, such as a sheet-metal sleeve tacked tight to the pole. It also keeps mice from moving in for the winter.

Put it up before the first hard cold, and leave your nest boxes up all winter either way. Birds usually slip in just before sunset and leave right after sunrise, so watch from a window at dusk. Feathers, droppings, and seed residue inside are the other giveaways.

A roost box covers the sleeping part. For food and water, see our guides to winter feeders and a winter birdbath, and find the rest of our coverage on the birds page.

The post Winter Roost Boxes: How to Give Small Birds a Warm Place to Sleep appeared first on Give A Shit About Nature.

If you’re going to plant one tree, plant it this fall, and make it a native. The rest is getting it in the ground so it lives.

Why a native tree feeds more wildlife

Most caterpillars can only eat a few kinds of plants. That matters because caterpillars are what most backyard birds feed their chicks: about 96 percent of terrestrial birds raise their young on them. A tree that caterpillars can’t eat is a tree that nesting birds can’t use.

A few native plants do most of the work. In a national analysis, 90 percent of caterpillars depend on just 14 percent of native plants. Oaks top the list. They host more than 950 species of butterfly and moth caterpillars, more than any other tree in North America.

The same pattern shows up from the bird’s side. When researchers tracked Carolina chickadees around Washington, D.C., the birds nested more in yards with lots of native trees, and oaks were their top choice in 70 percent of the yards studied. Native trees held scores of caterpillars, while most of the introduced plants had one or fewer. Raising one brood of five chickadees can take 6,000 to 9,000 caterpillars.

Tallamy’s counts run more conservative, and just as lopsided: oaks at up to 557 species, wild cherry and plums at 456, maples at 297, and elms at 215. Introduced Bradford pear and crape myrtle? “Almost no caterpillars.” Pretty looks, empty pantry.

Why fall works

Spring planting has a catch. You never know whether the weather will stay mild or jump straight to summer heat. In fall, you know you have six to eight weeks of cooling temperatures ahead.

Roots are on a different schedule than leaves. They put on a flush of growth in fall, when soil temperature and moisture are moderate, and keep growing after the leaves drop, until the ground freezes. That can be as late as February in parts of Illinois. A tree planted now gets a few extra months of root growth to settle in before its first summer.

The thing to get right is timing. Plant too late, and cold soil slows root growth before the tree has anchored itself. So go early in fall, mulch to even out soil temperature swings, and water if it’s dry so the tree goes into winter well hydrated. Nursery stock can run thinner in fall, so call ahead.

How to plant it

The basics are the same as in spring. Pick the right tree for the spot. Dig the hole 2 to 3 times as wide as the root ball, but no deeper than the root collar, the flare where the trunk widens at the base. Roots spread sideways more than down, so they need loosened soil to move into, and a trunk buried past its flare can rot.

How deep to dig

Wide and shallow beats narrow and deep.

Based on Illinois Extension planting guidance. Redrawn, not to scale.

Loosen the root ball and fix any circling roots. Backfill with the soil you dug out; amendments usually aren’t needed. Mulch, water well, and keep watering until the ground freezes, then protect the trunk from animals, mowers, and string trimmers.

Which tree to plant

Start with what’s native where you live. Oaks lead nationally, followed by willows, cherries and plums, pines, and poplars and aspens, according to a national analysis of host-plant data across US counties. Not every one of those fits a small yard, so check mature size before you buy.

The National Wildlife Federation’s keystone-plant lists give the top caterpillar plants for 10 ecoregions, a better guide than any one-size list. They’re at nwf.org/KeystonePlants. Take yours to a local nursery that sells natives.

An oak is a long game. Tallamy puts it this way: a single acorn, planted, will support “tens of thousands of individuals of thousands of species” over the tree’s life. If an oak won’t fit, our native plants and yard as habitat pages have more ideas, and if natives sound like a hassle, they aren’t.

The post Plant One Native Tree This Fall. You’ll Feed Wildlife for Decades. appeared first on Give A Shit About Nature.

That’s the business model for a lot of invasive shrubs and vines. The plant makes fruit that birds like, and the birds do the planting. Autumn olive is the classic case. A big shrub can make hundreds or thousands of fruits, each with one seed, and birds and small mammals spread them.

Late fall is the best time to find these plants, because the fruit gives them away. Four of the worst are below, with the lookalikes to avoid and the best window to go after each one.

Berries don’t make a shrub good for wildlife

Plenty of these plants were sold or planted on purpose as wildlife food. Autumn olive went into windbreaks and strip-mine reclamation for that reason, and birds do eat the fruit. The catch is what’s in it. It’s low in protein and fat and high in carbohydrates, so it’s less nutritious than the native fruit it pushes out.

Then there’s speed. Autumn olive can fruit in as few as three years, and it fixes its own nitrogen, so it does fine on poor soil where natives struggle. Bush honeysuckle leafs out earlier and holds its leaves later than most woodland shrubs, which shades out what’s underneath. In Illinois forests invaded by it, large trees are stunted by as much as 40 percent.

The real cost runs bigger than one yard. It’s a slow swap of a diverse understory for a few aggressive species, and fewer kinds of plants means fewer kinds of animals. The four below are common in the eastern and midwestern US. Anywhere else, check your state’s invasive plant list.

Autumn olive

The giveaway is silver. The leaves are pale green on top and silvery white underneath, and the red fruit is flecked with silvery scales. Fruit comes in clusters of four to six, each half an inch or less, and the stems carry sharp, stout spines. Leaves run 2 to 4 inches with smooth edges.

Russian olive is the lookalike. Its leaves are longer and narrower, and the leaves and twigs droop like a willow. It’s much more common in the west, autumn olive in the east, and both get the same treatment.

Small plants pull or dig out. Bigger ones are easiest in two steps. Cut them down, then treat the resprouts, which are a smaller target than a full shrub. Stump and bark treatments can be done year-round when the weather allows. Foliar spraying runs from June until the leaves start to turn.

Bush honeysuckle

Look for opposite leaves, white flowers along the stem in spring, and pairs of red fruit in fall. The surest check is the stem: cut a twig and look. Invasive bush honeysuckle is hollow in the center. The native honeysuckle in Illinois has a solid stem.

It’s easiest to spot in late fall, when it’s one of the last green shrubs in the woods. That’s also the best time to treat it. Cut-stump and foliar herbicide work best then, while the plant is sending energy down to its roots.

Young plants are shallow-rooted. Pull them, shake off the soil, and hang the roots in the air so they dry out. Don’t wrestle big ones. Use a lever-style puller, and very large plants need other methods. Cutting by itself just triggers vigorous regrowth unless you repeat it several times a year, for years.

Privet

Four privet species grow across the Mid-Atlantic and they’re hard to tell apart. You don’t need to. They behave the same and get the same treatment.

The fruit is dark purple or blue-black, about a quarter inch across, with a single seed. It ripens over winter, so you can see it next to the following year’s flowers. The stems are tan-gray with opposite leaves, and the branching is four-ranked. Look at a stem lengthwise and the branches form an X. Birds spread it almost year-round.

Flowering dogwood and blackhaw are native lookalikes, and both have opposite branching too. Check the bark. Dogwood and blackhaw have heavily textured bark low on the stem, often like reptile scales.

Pull small plants and get every root, since fragments can resprout. Cut stumps can be treated any time of year. Privet is persistent and comes back after several rounds, so plan on follow-up.

Oriental bittersweet

This is a twining vine that smothers whatever it climbs. The fruit has a yellow-orange husk that splits open in fall to show red, and it stays on the vine all winter. The leaves turn yellow in late summer, before native plants change, so it stands out from a distance. The bark of big stems is cracked and fish-netted, and there are no tendrils or barbs.

American bittersweet is the native lookalike, and it’s the one you don’t want to kill by mistake. It’s far less common and listed as rare or vulnerable in several states. The tell is where the fruit grows. American bittersweet sets fruit only at the ends of the stems. Oriental bittersweet sets it all along the stem, at the leaf junctions.

Nurseries sometimes sell oriental bittersweet labeled as American, so check the fruit placement before you buy. And skip the fall wreaths. Their seeds stay viable after drying and can sprout when the wreath ends up in the yard.

Control takes patience. Cut the vines at the ground and again at eye level, which leaves a gap so you can see what’s alive. Don’t pull cut vines down out of trees, because that can hurt the tree. Cut resprouts repeatedly, or treat them with a foliar spray. Foliar sprays go on from July 1 until fall color, and mowing can make it worse by encouraging root sprouts.

What to do this fall

Walk the fence lines and yard edges now, while the fruit makes everything easy to find. Photograph anything you’re not sure of and take it to your local extension office before you cut, because some of the lookalikes are native and one is rare.

Pull the small ones, and cut and treat the big ones in the window that fits each plant. Birds will keep dropping new seeds, so expect to repeat this. A few isolated plants are easy to remove, so a yearly check keeps it from getting out of hand.

Herbicide products and rules depend on your state, and the label is the law. Your county extension office can tell you what’s approved and when.

Then fill the gap. Our native plants and yard as habitat pages are good places to start, and if you think natives are hard, this piece answers that.

The post Find These Invasive Plants in Your Yard Before Birds Spread Their Seeds appeared first on Give A Shit About Nature.

A shallow bowl of fresh water is enough to help. A winter birdbath just takes a little more care than a summer one, mostly around heaters and keeping birds from getting soaked in extreme cold.

Why birds need water even when it’s freezing

Birds lose water every time they breathe. The moist lining of their lungs evaporates a little with each breath, and they lose more through their skin and their waste. Small birds lose it faster for their size, for the same reason they lose heat faster: more surface area per ounce of body (here are the numbers).

Wild birds have workarounds. A seed-eater makes some water inside its own body when it burns food for energy, and insects carry water too. But those tricks cover only part of what a bird loses, so most of them still need a drink every day.

Open water isn’t critical in winter. Birds conserve water well and can get some from snow or icicles. A bath just makes drinking and bathing easier, especially where liquid water is scarce, and melting snow costs energy a bird could spend staying warm. Birds that do find open water tend to pile in and drink together.

Bathing matters in winter as well. Splashing around cleans feathers and clears out parasites, and clean feathers hold heat better than matted ones. An open bath saves some of that heat and helps them keep their insulation in shape.

What kind of birdbath works in winter

Start with the material. Ceramic cracks in the cold, and concrete does too and is hard to clean. Tough plastic is the safer pick, and you can skip the garden center entirely. A garbage can lid, a saucer sled, or an old frying pan all work.

Keep the water shallow: 1 inch at the edges and no more than 2 inches at the deepest point, with a gradual slope. Small birds need something to grip, so make the bottom rough with sand, a few rocks, or a branch sticking out.

The right setup also depends on your winters and on whether you can run power to the bath. The picker below narrows it down.

What’s your winter bird bath setup?

Two taps. Your setup shows up below.

1. How cold does it get?

Hard freezes. Ice sticks around for days.Occasional freezes. A few cold snaps.Rarely or never freezes.

2. Can you get power to the bath?

A GFCI outlet is within reachNo power near the bath

Pick an answer for each question.Your setup shows up here with the reasons and sources. If winters rarely freeze, the second question doesn’t matter.

Whatever you pick, the bath should be shallow, rough on the bottom, and away from feeders. Details are in the sections below.

How to keep the water from freezing

If you have an outlet, heating is the easy route. A heated bath or a submersible heater needs power, and solar versions need sun. Thermostat-controlled de-icers turn on and off as needed, and many shut off if the bath goes dry.

No outlet? Use an unbreakable bowl. The routine is simple: put it out in the morning, bring it in when ice forms, and do it at the same time every day so birds learn when to show up.

Don’t add antifreeze or glycerin. To keep water liquid down to 15°F you’d need a 30 percent glycerin mix. It’s a low-level toxin, it raises a bird’s blood sugar, and it can mat feathers and cost them insulation.

If you use a heater, do the wiring right. Water and extension cords can electrocute someone, so put the heater on a GFCI circuit. The Electrical Safety Foundation calls a GFCI outdoors “a lifesaver, not a luxury”. A plug-in portable GFCI works if your outlet doesn’t have one. Use an outdoor-rated cord that matches the product, and call an electrician if you’re not sure.

Read the manual, too. K&H’s instructions for its de-icer say to use a grounded extension cord, keep the unit covered with water, and unplug it before you clean the bath.

Where to put it without endangering birds

A good rule of thumb: about 10 feet from the nearest shrub, in a spot that gets winter sun.

A bird at a bath is exposed, so it wants cover within a quick flight. But a shrub right next to the bath is where a cat waits. Advice runs from 10 to 15 feet from cover for a ground bath down to 5 to 10 feet from cat hiding spots, so about 10 feet lands in both ranges. If cats roam your yard, raise the bath 2 to 3 feet on a pedestal.

Sun keeps water liquid longer. Summer advice says shade, and in winter you want the reverse. Keep it out from under feeders too, where seed hulls and droppings land in the water.

Windows are the last piece, and feeder guidance conflicts. Bird Conservancy of the Rockies says within 3 feet of the glass or at least 30 feet away, while Birds Canada says within 10 feet. Go with the conservative version, and don’t count on any distance to prevent every collision. The real fix is marking the glass on the outside with decals.

Keeping birds safe and healthy

A winter birdbath adds a hazard the summer one doesn’t have. Wet feathers in freezing air can ice up, and a bird that can’t fly can’t dodge a cat or a hawk.

Plenty of birds bathe in frigid weather and shake off before the water freezes. Sometimes they don’t. There are reports of starlings dropping from the sky seconds after leaving heated baths, and mourning dove tails freezing to branches. A 2019 Star Tribune story tells of a Minnesota woman who found six cardinals in her yard that couldn’t fly. A wildlife rehabilitation center in Roseville told the paper bathing is dangerous in single digits or lower. None of that is a controlled study, but it’s reason enough not to leave a deep open pool out in a deep freeze.

The fix is to let birds drink without getting in. Lay a board, evergreen boughs, or wooden slats over part of the water, or use a nonmetallic grille with stones and sticks on top. Birds can reach the water with their bills, and they can’t soak.

Change the water daily if you can, and scrub the bath weekly with a stiff brush, mild soap, and water. Daily changes also stop mosquito larvae. In winter, dry air evaporates water fast, so top it off often, and clear algae when you see it.

If the water turns cloudy, moldy, or full of droppings, empty it and scrub. Then soak it in 1 part bleach to 9 parts water, rinse well, and let it dry. Dirty baths can spread diseases like trichomonosis and salmonella. Keep a dedicated brush, wear gloves, wash your hands afterward, and take baths down during an outbreak. Our piece on common backyard bird hazards has more.

What to do before the first freeze

• Swap ceramic or concrete for tough plastic, or use a lid, sled, or frying pan.
• Keep water 1 inch deep at the edges and 2 inches at most in the middle, with sand, rocks, or a branch for footing.
• Put it about 10 feet from the nearest shrub, in winter sun, and away from feeders.
• Plug a heater into a GFCI with an outdoor-rated cord, or plan the morning bowl swap.
• Add a board, grille, or stones if you get hard freezes.
• Wash the bath and set aside a brush for it. Use 1 part bleach to 9 parts water when it’s dirty.

Water is only one leg of winter survival. Birds also need food and cover, and Cornell’s K-12 program lists all three. Our guide to winter feeders makes the case for feeders, and the rest of our bird coverage is on the birds page.

The post Before the First Freeze, Give Your Backyard Birds a Reliable Water Source appeared first on Give A Shit About Nature.

Urban trees in the U.S. drop an estimated 28 million metric tons of leaf litter a year, measured dry. Then we spend a few weekends pushing it around with a machine that sounds like a jet engine with a grudge, bag it, and send it away.

Here’s the part nobody tells you at the hardware store. That layer of leaves is not trash. It’s a nursery, a pantry, and a winter coat for a huge number of the insects that make your yard work.

So, are leaf blowers bad for wildlife? Yes, mostly because they make it effortless to strip a whole yard down to bare soil. The harm we can measure is the missing leaves. The harm from the machine itself (airflow, noise, vacuum mode) is plausible, but no study has put a number on what a blower kills on contact, since the Maryland work measured leaf removal, not blowers.

Three questions hiding in one

“Leaf blowers kill wildlife” can mean three different things, and the evidence is different for each.

Leaves removed. This one has direct experiments. In the Maryland plots, fewer moths, butterflies, beetles, and spiders emerged in spring where the leaves were gone.

Animals hit by the machine. Blowing, vacuuming, and shredding could kill or displace animals living in the litter. The evidence here is thin. We couldn’t find a study that counts blower deaths, so the sections below mark what’s documented, what’s an expert’s warning, and what’s the closest experiment.

Leaves moved, not removed. Raking or blowing leaves into a bed keeps them whole and on your property, and Xerces and the National Park Service both prefer that to shredding. A Maryland forest experiment found piling and keeping leaves helped insect communities, but that was a forest, not a yard. Nobody has tested relocation in yards.

A fallen leaf isn’t dead habitat

Most insects don’t fly south. They stay put. They spend winter in the exact yard where they spent the summer, tucked into the ground, the leaf litter, hollow stems, and bark, barely alive, waiting for warm weather.

The leaf layer does three jobs at once. It insulates, so a hard freeze doesn’t reach everything underneath. It hides, because a cocoon that looks like a dead leaf is hard to find when it’s under a hundred real ones. And it feeds, since the leaves slowly rot into food for the tiny creatures at the bottom of the food chain, and those feed everything above them.

Insects get through winter in one of four forms: as an egg, as a larva (a caterpillar or grub), as a pupa (the cocoon or chrysalis stage), or as an adult. All four show up in a pile of leaves. That’s why a clean lawn in December can mean a quiet yard in June.

Meet the animals spending winter beneath your feet

These are the neighbors you’re sweeping up. Each claim below links to its source.

Woolly bears. You know them as the fuzzy black and rust-colored caterpillars crossing the road in October. They spend winter curled up under leaves and, according to Xerces, use leaf piles for protection from cold and predators. In spring they spin a cocoon and become Isabella tiger moths.

Luna moths. Giant, pale green, gorgeous. Their cocoons look like dried leaves, because that is the whole trick. Rake the leaves into a bag and you’ve bagged the disguise along with the moth.

Fireflies. Here’s the one that gets people. The glowing adult you love in June is the short part of the life cycle. Most of a firefly’s life is spent as a larva, a little glow worm that hunts snails and slugs. The Fish and Wildlife Service says they are born and raised in the duff and need the leaves that naturally litter the floor. In colder regions they can spend two years as larvae. We cover why fireflies are disappearing and how to build a firefly sanctuary in separate guides.

Bumblebee queens. Only the mated queen survives winter. She digs in just an inch or two, alone, and sleeps there until spring. An extra thick layer of leaves, Xerces notes, is welcome protection.

Red-banded hairstreaks. This small butterfly lays its eggs on fallen oak leaves. When the caterpillars hatch, those leaves are lunch. Remove the leaf and you remove the egg and the first meal. Once they hatch, caterpillars also need the right host plants close by.

Mourning cloaks. Not every butterfly spends winter as an egg or a cocoon. Mourning cloaks spend it as adults, dormant in the leaf litter until spring, and University of Maryland entomologists note that removing the litter can disturb them.

Beetles and spiders. Less cute, hugely useful. They’re predators and recyclers. In the Maryland study they were among the groups that dropped when leaves were removed, which we’ll get to.

Toads, frogs, and turtles. Rutgers Cooperative Extension lists reptiles and amphibians among the animals that depend on leaf litter. American toads spend much of their lives in it, using it as camouflage, while wood frogs and eastern box turtles spend winter under it.

Birds and small mammals. The same Rutgers factsheet says birds, chipmunks, and shrews forage in fallen leaves for insects and seeds, and that ovenbirds build their nests in the leaf layer on the ground.

What a leaf blower adds to the problem

A rake is slow, so most people rake the lawn and quit. A blower is fast, so people blow out the beds, the fence line, and the ground under the shrubs too, and landscaping crews do it every week of the season. That’s our reasoning, not a study’s finding. It’s also why the machine matters even before you count what its airflow does.

Going roughly by what the Maryland work found, from least to most harmful:

1. Leaving them: costs nothing and does the most good.
2. Moving them (rake or blow): keeps leaves whole and on your property, which is what the National Park Service and Xerces recommend over shredding. It works when they land in a bed or under a tree.
3. Blowing them out of the yard: scatters and exposes what’s in the layer, and moves the leaves, and whatever is in them, off your property.
4. Raking and bagging: the insects leave with the leaves. That’s the removal the Maryland plots tested.
5. Vacuuming and shredding: leaf vacuums and mulching mowers chop the leaves, and the insects on them. In a Maryland forest experiment, shredding hurt insect communities about as much as removing leaves.

Airflow. Reported outlet speeds run high. Humane World for Animals says up to 200 miles per hour, and Audubon says up to 280 and adds that the blast erodes topsoil and sends pollen, fertilizer, and herbicides adrift. Those are nozzle figures, so they say little about the air a few feet away. We couldn’t find a study measuring what that airflow does to a cocoon or a queen bumblebee’s burrow. The Swiss Animal Protection group warns, in German, that strong turbulence can kill small animals outright. That’s an expert’s judgment, not a count.

Vacuum mode. This one has the clearest mechanism. The same Swiss group says small animals get pulled into leaf vacuums and chopped up alive. That’s another warning with no body count behind it. The closest data we have is the Maryland forest experiment, where shredding leaves hurt insect communities about as much as removing them.

Noise. Audubon says some gas blowers produce more than 100 decibels of low-frequency sound. What that does to wildlife hasn’t been measured. Humane World says the effects of landscaping noise on wildlife remain unquantified, but research on other short bursts of noise gives hints: airplanes disrupt toad choruses and make toads easier prey,.

Germany’s Federal Environment Ministry has gone further than most. It says private homeowners should skip leaf blowers and vacuums altogether where possible, and that public use should happen only when indispensable. As the BBC reported in 2019, a ban isn’t planned, since EU and competition law get in the way. The ministry’s concern is for insects, small animals, and soil life.

What the Maryland study measured

Max Ferlauto and Karin Burghardt at the University of Maryland ran the study that gets cited most. Over two years, in 20 pesticide-free suburban yards, they marked out one-square-meter plots in two kinds of spots. In the tidy, regularly raked parts of yards, they added leaves to some plots. In low-maintenance corners where leaves had always been left alone, they removed leaves from some plots. Then they set emergence traps and counted everything that crawled or flew out in spring.

The results, from the paper published in Science of the Total Environment in 2025:

What disappeared when leaves were removed

Drop in spring emergence, Maryland yards, compared with plots where leaves stayed

Spiders (low-maintenance areas)up to 67%

Moths and butterflies (numbers)45%

Moth and butterfly species richnessabout 40%

Beetles24%

All five groups tracked, combined17%

Flies and parasitic waspsno clear drop

Spiders were affected in the low-maintenance areas only, so “up to 67%” is the high end, not the typical yard. “Species richness” counts how many different species emerged. These figures measure removing leaves, not blower mortality. Source: Ferlauto and Burghardt 2025, Science of the Total Environment.

The biggest hit landed on moths and butterflies. Species richness fell by about 40%, and the species that lost the most were the ones that overwinter as larvae, overwinter in the dead leaves themselves, or spend their larval life feeding inside leaves. Leaf miners, in other words. The tiny wasps that parasitize leaf miners, a family called Eulophidae, took the worst hit among the wasps. That matters, because parasitic wasps are natural pest control. Across the five groups they tracked, emergence dropped 17% overall.

The paper also found that leaf removal made spring soil temperatures swing more, and that moth and butterfly emergence went up with more leaf biomass. The authors conclude that keeping leaves supports insects in both high and low-maintenance parts of a yard.

What it doesn’t show. The study counted how many insects emerged in spring, not how many died, and it didn’t test any tool. The yards were pesticide-free and in Maryland, so a yard in Oregon or Florida could look different. And it tells us what happens when leaves are removed, not what happens when they’re moved somewhere else on your property.

The damage doesn’t stop with the insects

Insects are food. Fewer caterpillars means fewer meals for chickadees and warblers feeding young in spring. Fewer beetles and spiders mean fewer predators keeping the rest in check. You can pull one thread out of a food web, but you don’t get to choose what else comes with it.

Then there’s the dirt. A second Maryland study from the same lab looked at soil in 13 suburban yards between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. Where leaves had been left to pile up year after year, the soil held up to 32% more organic carbon and the leaves broke down 21% faster than where leaves were routinely removed. Leaving leaves for just two years didn’t bring the damaged soil back. Years of raking left a deficit, and it doesn’t refill quickly.

A tidy yard without hauling wildlife to the landfill

You don’t have to give up a lawn. You just have to stop treating every square foot the same.

Ferlauto also ran an experiment in a research forest at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center near Annapolis, testing which leaf strategies work. Piling and retaining leaves had similar positive effects on insect communities. Shredding and removing them had similar negative effects. It was a forest, not a backyard, but he thinks the result carries over to homes.

So here is a workable plan:

1. Leave leaves where they fall in beds, along fences, under trees, and in any corner nobody walks through.
2. Rake or blow leaves off the lawn itself, then move them into those beds or under trees. Xerces says too many leaves can smother grass, but that in soil they suppress weeds, hold moisture, and add nutrients.
3. Don’t shred them with a mower or a chipper, and don’t bag them up if you can avoid it.
4. Pile some leaves and sticks loosely in a back corner. Our guide to building a brush pile shows how.
5. If you need to clear a path or a patio, do that and leave the rest.
6. If there are kids or pets who use the lawn, keep that part tidy. Then rewild the rest.

Ferlauto’s line is the one to keep: “I’m a big advocate of ‘do what you can, where you can.’ It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.”

The same plan, spot by spot, with timing:

When clearing leaves is the right call

Leaving every leaf alone isn’t the goal. A few places really do need clearing.

Your lawn. Xerces says a thick layer can smother grass. Move the leaves to beds and trees. Don’t bag them.

Streets and storm drains. Leaves in a bed help. Leaves in a gutter are a different story. In two matched Madison, Wisconsin neighborhoods, the USGS found that fall leaf litter made up 56% of the annual phosphorus in stormwater (winter left out) when leaves stayed on the streets, versus 16% when the city collected them in time. Phosphorus feeds algae in streams and lakes. The Madison streets were lined mostly with Norway maple and green ash, so numbers elsewhere will differ. The practical point still holds: blowing leaves to the curb gets you the worst of both worlds.

The woods edge and ticks. A New Jersey study found that leaf blowing piled deep leaves along forest edges on residential lots, and those piles had at least three times as many blacklegged tick nymphs as natural edges or forest. A Connecticut study of 42 properties looked at tick habitat more broadly. Nymph density was highest in wooded areas next to lawn edges with leaf litter, and also next to stone walls, and it found no significant drop where leaf litter had been removed. The designs differ, so they don’t cancel each other out. Together they point to the same practical move: keep deep leaf piles off the border where you walk.

Diseased or pest-infested plants. University of Maryland Extension says leaves and debris can be left, relocated, or reused as habitat unless they come from a diseased or pest-infested plant. Those are the exception.

What about spring cleanup?

Spring is where people undo the good work. You’ll hear that you should wait until temperatures stay above 50°F. That rule is a rough guide, not a biological threshold, and insects don’t read thermometers. Xerces warns against jumping in on the first warm day. The University of Maryland Extension’s advice is simple: wait as long as you can. Oregon State Extension suggests waiting until May to protect cavity-nesting bees. We go deeper on leaf timing in our guide to what to do with leaves on your lawn, and the same logic applies to cutting back native plants.

If you keep the blower, or hire a crew

The blower isn’t the villain. Using it to strip a yard is the problem. If you’re keeping yours, or a crew runs one for you, these cut most of the damage:

• Use it to move leaves into beds and under trees, not into the street or a bag.
• Aim it at hard surfaces and the lawn. Leave beds, fence lines, and the ground under shrubs alone.
• Skip vacuum and mulching modes.
• Hold off on spring cleanup until late spring.

What to tell a lawn service or your HOA: “Please leave the leaves in the beds and under the trees. Blow what’s on the lawn and walks into the beds, not the street. No vacuum or mulching mode, and no spring cleanup until late spring.”

The moth that flies past the porch light next June is, right now, a cocoon in your leaves. So is the firefly larva, the bumblebee queen, and the spiders that hunt your garden pests. They all got there on their own and they all need almost nothing from you. Mostly they need you to put the blower back in the garage. If you want to do more this season, we also cover how to support butterflies in the fall.

Questions people ask

Do leaf blowers kill insects directly?

We couldn’t find a study that counts it, so nobody can give you a number. The measured harm is from removing leaves. Swiss animal welfare experts warn that strong airflow and vacuum mode can kill small animals, but that’s a warning, not a measurement.

Do leaf blowers hurt birds?

They remove the litter where ground-foraging birds look for insects, and where ovenbirds nest, per Rutgers. The effect of blower noise on wildlife hasn’t been quantified, according to Humane World.

How loud is a gas leaf blower?

Audubon says some produce more than 100 decibels of low-frequency sound that carries through walls.

Will leaving leaves kill my grass?

A thick layer can, according to Xerces. That’s why you move leaves off the lawn and into beds and under trees, instead of leaving a deep blanket on turf.

Rake or blow?

Either one keeps the leaves whole, and both Xerces and the National Park Service prefer that to shredding. What matters most is where the leaves end up. Move them to a bed, not a bag.

Are electric blowers safer for wildlife than gas?

We couldn’t find a study that compares the two on insect mortality, so we won’t pretend to know. Xerces names electric blowing as an acceptable alternative to shredding. Electric is quieter and has no exhaust. What it does to the leaf layer is the same.

Does mulching with a mower kill insects?

The Maryland researchers say shredding or mulching leaves causes as much damage as bagging them, and that running leaves through a mulcher or chipper destroys the insects clinging to them.

Will leaves bring ticks?

It depends where you put them. A New Jersey study found at least three times as many blacklegged tick nymphs in deep piles of blown leaves along forest edges than in natural edges or forest, and the authors suggest keeping leaves out of the lawn-and-woods border. A Connecticut study of 42 properties found no significant drop in nymph density where leaf litter was removed. Don’t heap leaves where you walk, and keep the pile off the forest edge.

How long should I leave leaves?

Through winter and into late spring. Xerces says to wait until late in the season, and the longer the better.

Can I compost leaves without harming overwintering insects?

If the leaves have insects in them, not really. Ferlauto says putting leaves in compost bags kills the insects on them. A leaf pile left in a corner is the safer version of composting.

The post What Leaf Blowers Do to the Wildlife Living in Your Yard appeared first on Give A Shit About Nature.

Some people searching “can I keep a pet opossum” are standing in a yard next to a baby opossum with no mother in sight, deciding in real time whether to bring it inside. Others really do want one as a pet.

Found a baby opossum? Measure it first

Young opossums fall off their mother’s back, and she doesn’t come back for them. A juvenile on its own for the first time looks tiny and helpless and is often fine.

So measure, nose to the base of the tail, tail not counted. The Wildlife Center of Virginia says an opossum at least 8 inches long that weighs more than 7.25 ounces, or 200 grams, can survive on its own and needs no help.

DFW Wildlife uses the same 8 inches and offers a field shortcut: a dollar bill is 6 inches, so the animal should be longer than a dollar bill by two inches.

The Opossum Society of the U.S. puts the cutoff at 7 inches. We use 8 as a conservative benchmark. If the animal is borderline, a rehabilitator can settle it quickly.

Nose to base of tail, tail not counted

Wildlife Center of Virginia and DFW Wildlife Coalition guidance

Under 8 in

Call a licensed rehabilitator

8 in or more, over 200 g

Leave it alone if healthy

Any size: bleeding, wounds, a broken bone, fly eggs that look like grains of rice, cold or wet, crying nonstop, or any time in a cat’s or dog’s mouth means call a wildlife vet or rehabilitator now.

Under 8 inches, it does need help, but not yours. It needs a licensed rehabilitator.

Need a rehabilitator near you? Use our state-by-state wildlife rehabilitator finder.

If you have a baby that needs help right now

• Call a licensed rehabilitator or wildlife vet first. That call matters more than anything else on this list, and they’ll tell you what to do next.
• Wear gloves, and avoid contact with the baby’s saliva, as the Wildlife Center of Virginia advises.
• While you wait for instructions, keep it in a secure, ventilated box with a soft cloth, somewhere dark and quiet, away from people and pets.
• If it’s cold, add gentle warmth under half the box so it can move off the heat. The Merck Veterinary Manual recommends supplemental heat with a gradient, so the animal can pick its own comfort zone.
• Give no food and no water until the rehabilitator tells you what to do.

If you find a dead adult on the road, babies may be alive in the pouch. The Wildlife Center says to check only if it’s safe from traffic, wear gloves, and take the whole animal in a box to a permitted rehabilitator if babies are attached.

Why raising a baby yourself so often goes wrong

Opossums are marsupials, and that’s most of the problem. A baby is born after about 13 days of gestation, crawls into the pouch and nurses continuously for roughly two months, then rides on its mother’s back. They’re independent at around four months old.

A rehabilitation presentation from Wildlife Rehabilitation of North Carolina describes the newest babies as embryonic, with mouths sealed around the nipple and an esophagus so thin that tube feeding can tear it.

The Wildlife Center of Virginia warns that the wrong food or feeding technique can lead to sickness or death.

And milk isn’t the easy fix it looks like. A veterinary care sheet notes that lactose-based sugars, like milk, are poorly tolerated by opossums.

It gets starker the smaller they are. A tiny, pink baby was living in a pouch that held it at a constant temperature, like an incubator. DFW says pink babies have very low odds even in rehab.

If an expert with permits and equipment struggles to keep one alive, a first-timer with a heating pad and an internet recipe isn’t going to do better.

Raising one also isn’t allowed in many places. The Wildlife Center points out that keeping a wild mammal in captivity without a state permit is illegal in Virginia, and other states have their own versions of that rule.

What the law says, and why you can’t trust the lists

Opossum possession is state law, and the states are all over the place. Arkansas allows hand-captured opossums as pets, up to six qualifying animals per household, with enclosure and other rules on top. Wisconsin exempts opossums from its wildlife licensing, as long as the animal was legally obtained.

Other states require a permit, and those permits tend to be built for rehabbers and educators rather than pet owners. Some states ban private possession outright. I couldn’t find a primary-source count of how many fall into each group.

Even worse, the “pet opossum laws by state” pages that I found online squeeze all of that into one word, usually “legal” or “illegal.”

Florida shows why that misleads. The FWC lists opossums as Class III wildlife, and keeping one as a pet takes a free personal-pet permit. A tracker that says “legal” leaves out the permit.

The permit comes with a catch, too. Per the FWC’s FAQ, personal pet permits are only issued for animals that are captive bred and obtained from a legal licensed source. A wild opossum from your yard doesn’t qualify.

Can you keep an opossum as a pet?

State-by-state legal status. Tap or hover a state.

United StatesCanada

Pick a state.
Each one shows its status, a one-line note, and the official source.

LegalPermit required or mixedIllegalUnclear

Snapshot taken October 10, 2026. Laws change, and many cities and counties add their own rules. “Unclear” means we couldn’t confirm the state’s rule against an official source. Check with your state wildlife agency before you take one in.

Your county or HOA can be stricter than the state, too. If you’re seriously weighing it, call your state wildlife agency and ask. We walk through the same maze for another animal in keeping a pet raccoon and keeping a wild rabbit.

What a pet opossum actually takes

Say the animal is legal where you live, or you’re past the baby stage.

Opossums aren’t sold in the pet trade, and a veterinary information sheet from LafeberVet says animals kept as companions were often orphaned in infancy. Many pet opossums start as orphaned babies that never make it back into the wild.

After that, it’s a wild animal with a long list of requirements, and the veterinary sources spell them out.

A few of those details cut against the horror stories. The same sources say opossums tend to pick a latrine spot and can be trained to use a litter box, and that a pet can adjust to its owner’s daytime schedule.

The lifespan is the part that stings. In the wild, opossums live one to two years. The Smithsonian’s National Zoo says three or four in human care, and the LafeberVet handout says pets can live 3 to 7 years, with rare reports of 8 to 10.

So captivity roughly doubles a life that’s still short compared with a cat or a dog.

Three things people get wrong about wild opossums

Opossums come with three reputations, and each one is partly earned and partly oversold.

They eat all the ticks. Some of it is earned. In a study of field-caught animals, opossums and squirrels killed 83 to 96% of the larval blacklegged ticks that tried to feed on them. Those ticks were deliberately placed on the animals in a lab.

A later stomach-content study of 32 Illinois opossums found no ticks at all, and questioned the often-quoted 5,500 ticks per week figure.

So opossums groom ticks off themselves and kill many of them, and it’s still unclear how much that cuts tick numbers in your yard. Our guide to animals and tick control covers the wider picture.

They can’t get rabies. Opossums can get rabies, but it’s rare in North America. The usual explanation is a lower body temperature than most mammals, though a CDC journal report calls opossums “considered resistant,” not immune, and documented a rabid white-eared opossum in Brazil.

Hissing, drooling, and baring teeth are defensive displays, not reliable signs of rabies. They also aren’t a bluff to test. A frightened opossum can still bite, so don’t approach one just because you think it’s harmless.

They’re faking it. The famous dead act is real, and it’s involuntary. It’s a stress response called tonic immobility, and the vet sheet says it can last from as little as a minute to as long as six hours. Give a motionless one time before you decide it’s dead.

More on living alongside them in are opossums good to have around and what to do if you see one.

Questions people ask

Is it illegal to keep a pet opossum? It depends on the state. Some ban it, some require a permit, and a few allow it with conditions. Local rules can be stricter. Ask your state wildlife agency, since the online lists conflict.

Can I raise a baby opossum I found? Not safely, and in some states not legally. Under about 8 inches, it needs a licensed rehabilitator. At 8 inches or more and healthy, it should be left where it is.

How do I know a baby is old enough to be on its own? Measure nose to the base of the tail. At least 8 inches and over 200 grams means independent, according to the Wildlife Center of Virginia. One rehab group uses 7 inches, so when you’re close, call a rehabber.

How long do opossums live? One to two years in the wild. In human care, the Smithsonian says three or four, and a vet handout says 3 to 7.

What does a pet opossum eat? Veterinary sources describe low-fat cat food or an omnivore pellet, vegetables, a little fruit, and a protein source a few times a week. They gain weight easily.

Do opossums carry rabies? Rarely. They’re considered resistant, though not immune, so a sick-looking opossum still deserves distance.

The post Why a Pet Opossum Almost Never Works Out, Even Where It’s Legal appeared first on Give A Shit About Nature.

The catch is that the right move depends on where the raccoon is and what time of year it is. A raccoon raiding your trash is a different problem from a mother raising kits in your chimney. Start with the table.

Start with where the raccoon is

The deterrent aisle mostly sells you a delay

Hardware stores sell ammonia, mothball granules, predator urine, cayenne sprays, ultrasonic emitters, and motion sprinklers. Even the companies that sell traps are lukewarm about them. Havahart rates homemade repellents like ammonia and mothballs negligible for getting rid of raccoons, and Critter Control, a removal company, says scent deterrents and motion devices give limited results because raccoons figure out the threat is fake.

That fits the animal. Raccoons are curious, persistent, and good at learning which scary things are harmless. The light flashes and no predator shows up. The smell fades and the trash is still there.

There are other problems. Wisconsin extension staff say ammonia and mothballs are not registered for use as repellents and can harm helpless young animals if you put them in a den. Sprays also wash off in the rain, so you end up reapplying all season.

Short-term eviction is the one use with agency backing. Connecticut’s wildlife agency says harassment, or repellents like vinegar or ammonia combined with light and noise from a portable radio, can be effective for getting raccoons out of a building. Think of it as a few days of pressure in one spot while you plan the permanent fix.

What raccoons are actually after

They come for food or for a safe, dry place to raise kits. The food list rarely changes: unsecured trash, pet food left out overnight, feeder seed, fallen fruit, an open compost pile, and lawn grubs they’ll peel the sod back to reach. Connecticut’s agency recommends strapped lids, secured cans, bins, or a garage for trash, keeping pet food inside, and predator guards on feeder poles.

If they’re tearing up the grass, the grubs are the draw, and you can deal with those without poison. We cover that in our guide to getting rid of lawn grubs naturally.

Shelter is the other half. Raccoons reach roofs by climbing trees, downspouts, and vines, and they den in attics, chimneys and sheds. The usual fixes are a chimney cap, repaired eaves, and trimmed branches. The same find-the-hole logic applies to any animal in a building, and we walk through it in what to do about a bat in the house.

What happens to a relocated raccoon

Catching a raccoon and driving it somewhere green sounds humane. The research isn’t kind to that idea, though it’s messier than the version you usually hear.

Survival was poor in several studies. In Toronto, researchers moved 24 city raccoons 25 to 45 km, and mortality approached 50% in the first three months. In Kentucky, the odds of raccoons trucked in from Florida surviving to hunting season were under 10%. Those are old studies on specific groups. A claim like “90% die” circulates widely, but we couldn’t trace it to a study, so we left it out.

Some survive, and that creates a different problem. A 2023 South Carolina experiment moved 30 raccoons 16 km. Most settled into new home ranges, but they covered about 13 times more ground at first, and three walked back more than 16 km to where they were caught. The authors warn that this kind of movement can spread rabies and urge people to stop translocating raccoons. In a Tennessee study that released 286 raccoons, only 29 were recovered and 41% of those were illegal kills. Its authors thought translocation could work where habitat is suitable and resident raccoons are few.

It often doesn’t fix anything. Tennessee’s wildlife agency says relocated raccoons are quickly replaced by other raccoons when whatever drew them is still there.

The law may rule it out. Connecticut says relocation of trapped raccoons is not allowed, citing rabies risk and a state law. Raccoons that can’t be released on site have to be humanely killed, which isn’t what most people picture when they buy a live trap. Rules differ by state, so check yours first.

Can you trap a raccoon on your own property?

State-by-state rules for homeowners. Tap or hover a state.

Pick a state.
Each one shows its status, a short note, and the official source.

Legal, no permit neededLicense, permit, or limitsUnclear

Snapshot taken October 11, 2026. This covers trapping a raccoon on land you own or occupy. Laws change, and many cities and counties add their own rules. “Unclear” means we couldn’t confirm the state’s rule against an official source. Check with your state wildlife agency before you set a trap.

Then there’s timing. Kits are born in spring, so a raccoon trapped from spring into summer might be a mother, and her young get left behind. We couldn’t find a study on how often that happens. It’s the reason wildlife agencies tell you to check for young first.

Doing it right, including the timing

For a raccoon working the yard at night, it’s all about food. Secure the trash, bring in the pet bowls, and deal with the fallen fruit and grubs, and give it a while. We couldn’t find a study that says how long, so watch your own yard and expect it to take more than a night or two.

For a raccoon in a building, timing matters more than technique. Kits are usually born in April or May after about a 63-day gestation, and Connecticut puts whelping at late March through May. Young raccoons generally leave the den eight to ten weeks after birth. Assume kits are there from late winter through summer.

1. Check for young. Washington’s wildlife agency says to look for a nest, and to leave the family alone if young are present, because evicting a mother can leave kits behind.
2. If you can’t wait, make the den unpleasant. Light, a radio on a talk station, and a strong smell near the den can push a mother to move her kits to a backup den over a few days. Never light a fire to drive one out of a chimney, and keep ammonia and mothballs off the nest.
3. Seal once it’s empty. Use heavy galvanized hardware cloth or a proper repair, not foam or window screen. For a chimney, install a cap.
4. Call a licensed wildlife professional if the den is out of reach, you can’t confirm it’s empty, or anyone in the house has a health concern.

Droppings are a health issue. Raccoons use communal latrines, and their feces can carry roundworm eggs. The CDC says to wear an N95 respirator in confined spaces and lightly mist the area to keep dust down. Connecticut recommends a HEPA respirator and gloves in attics. If there’s a latrine, clean it carefully or hire someone who does this for a living.

A raccoon out in daylight isn’t automatically sick. Connecticut notes that raccoons adjust their feeding schedules, especially in spring when rearing young. Unprovoked aggression, poor coordination, and disorientation are the signs worth worrying about, and we cover them in are raccoons dangerous.

Don’t take a kit home, either. In most states keeping one is illegal, and we break it down in the legal reality of keeping a pet raccoon.

A raccoon on your property means the place is a decent spot to be a raccoon. They also do real work out there, and we wrote about the animals that used to keep their numbers in check in what eats a raccoon.

Questions people ask

What smell gets rid of raccoons fastest? Ammonia or vinegar plus light and noise can push a raccoon out of a den for a few days, per the Connecticut wildlife agency. It doesn’t work as a yard-wide fix, because rain washes sprays away and raccoons get used to smells.

Is it legal to trap a raccoon and release it somewhere else? It depends on your state. Connecticut prohibits it outright, and Tennessee says it’s illegal in some areas. Check with your state wildlife agency before you trap anything.

How do I get a raccoon out of my attic without hurting it? Check for young first. If it’s spring or summer, assume there are kits. Wait for the family to leave if you can, or use light, noise, and scent to encourage the mother to move them. Seal the entry only when you’re sure it’s empty, and call a licensed wildlife professional if you can’t confirm that.

Will the raccoon just come back? If you only removed the animal, it can come back, or a different one can take its place. If you removed the food and sealed the entry, there’s less reason to.

Does one raccoon mean there are more? Not necessarily. In spring and summer, though, a single adult using your property could be a female with kits nearby, which is a good reason to check before you trap.

The post How to Get Rid of Raccoons Without Trapping (Trapping Backfires) appeared first on Give A Shit About Nature.